


The Safehouse

by enthusiasmgirl



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Camping, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 03:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12379656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthusiasmgirl/pseuds/enthusiasmgirl
Summary: In which Jessica Jones pretends to hate everyone, Danny Rand is clueless and trying to be woke, Luke Cage tries to get them all to just relax and get along, and Matt Murdock seeks closure on his relationship with Stick by convincing the Defenders to accompany him on a camping trip.





	The Safehouse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mercurialfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurialfan/gifts).



> Okay! So... this fic is for Merc, who I hope really enjoys it despite the fact that it is unbeta'd and was written as a last-minute pinch hit (I won't lie).
> 
> The prompt was:
> 
> _When Matt turns out to be fine, the Defenders decide to go camping, to train/team-building. It does not exactly go to plan. (I just want an enthusiastic Danny, a bored Jessica, a befuddled Matt (has he even been in a forest before?), and a stoic (but secretly enjoying it) Luke, trying to survive the wilderness of wherever. Can be funny, or action/adventure. No major character death please._
> 
>  
> 
> The only character death is the canon death of Stick, because I decided to use this fic to also exorcise some of my "Matt needs to grieve for Stick" demons. I greatly apologize for the lack of Luke doing much in this fic. I just had no clue what to really do with him, unfortunately. So he's there being the glue keeping them together, basically. Also, I would apologize for Danny being kind of a bit of an ableist and racist jerk, but that's canon so blame the people behind the show. 
> 
> I'm also sorry but not sorry that it ends on basically kind of a punchline that also makes the ending really only half an ending. It amused me.

Matt wanted to blame the bracelet. That stupid handmade colored paper, crafted into a symbol of his love, obedience and devotion. He wished it were that simple, that Stick had just left because he wasn't interested in being Matt's father figure.

But truthfully, he knew that he'd disappointed Stick long before that moment. He was never cut out to be a soldier, to be the kind of son who Stick would want. He wasn't good enough. The woods had taught him that.

* * *

"I'm sorry, you want us to do what now?" Jessica asked, blunt as always before chugging back her third beer in ten minutes while Josie eyed them warily from the other end of the bar.

"I know that it's a lot to ask. It's not exactly something that requires any of our particular skillsets," Matt explained, "But I just... I can't do it alone." He'd failed to do it alone once, but they didn't need to know that. "This is Stick we're talking about. Even if I can find the safehouse now, knowing him it's rigged with a half-dozen traps to even open the door."

"What makes you think it's still out there?" Luke asked. "You were how old? Twelve? When he took you out there last? As smart and as paranoid as he was, there's no way he would have kept it in the same place all these years."

"It's there," Matt insisted. "I know it is. He was very specific about it. If anyone ever came for me, and I know now that he meant if the Hand ever came for me... that's where I was supposed to go. Even after he left. It didn't matter. It would be there. He would be there."

"You know he's dead, right?" Jessica asked. "This isn't a whole thing where you're convinced he isn't and that he'll still be there? And then we get there and he isn't and you freak out, we're all left watching you sob and deal? Because I'm not your therapist, Murdock. You were there when your lover worked out your mutual incestuous daddy issues on him with a giant sword. Get over it."

"I know he's gone," Matt insisted. "But the safehouse is there. And whatever he left there, whatever is left of his group and their war..."

"The Chaste," Danny interrupted. "And it's our war now."

"That's where it will be," Matt said firmly. "I knew him. He wouldn't have died without contingencies, without plans in place. He would have known that I would go there if anything happened to him. I'm sure of it."

"So how do we get there?" Danny asked enthusiastically.

"I have a map," Matt told them, and he carefully unfolded it on the bar in front of them, being careful not to rip the yellowed paper.

"Are you kidding?" Jessica asked when she saw the state it was in. And Matt couldn't blame her.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?" Matt asked warily. "Do the nuns know that we're leaving?"

"Don't get your panties in a twist, kid," Stick told him, laying something flat between them on a crate. "I told the penguins that we're going camping. Nice, wholesome fun. I promised them roasted marshmallows and campfire songs. They won't suspect a thing. Now, lay your hands on that and tell me what you feel."

Matt did as he was asked, spreading his fingertips across the thin paper. "It's a map?" he asked.

"Good. You can feel the groove of the pen and the difference the ink is, yeah?" Stick asked.

"Yeah," Matt said, gaining confidence and basking in the encouragement. He ran his fingers along each curved line. "It's hand-drawn. This is New York City." He narrowed down his exploration to one tiny section of the map. "I can feel all the islands around it and the coast. It's detailed."

"I try," Stick told him.

"You drew it?" Matt asked, surprised.

Stick nodded, and Matt was pleased that he didn't narrate it. "I couldn't trust another living soul with it," Stick told him.

"But you trust me?" Matt asked, a lump developing in his throat.

"Don't make me regret it," Stick replied.

* * *

"Ugh," Matt said, shooing another fly away from him and rubbing the itchy welt that he could feel developing. The distraction nearly caused him to fall over himself when his cane slammed into a thick tree root.

"You alright there, Matt?" Luke asked. The rain trickled down on them from the canopy of tree leaves above.

Matt sighed. "I'm fine."

He really wasn't. He hadn't been from the moment they had parked the car at the campsite and had to begin the hike. He hated nature, and he was convinced that it hated him. But he wasn't about to tell the other Defenders that.

"I told you that thing wouldn't really be all that useful out here," Jessica said. Matt imagined that she was probably gesturing to his cane.

"Don't do that," Matt told her, frustrated.

"Do what? Give you good advice?" Jessica asked him, easily stepping under a bent tree branch ahead of him that then snapped into his face, flinging water into his ears. He stopped to shake his head and try and dislodge it.

"No, tell me how to do this," he said. "You don't know me. Stop acting like you do. I've been doing just fine up until I met you. I know what I need and I can handle myself."

"Sure," Jessica said.

"What does that mean?" Matt demanded to know.

"It means I'll believe it when I see it," she replied. She stomped off further ahead, snapping branches in front of her on her way and almost daring them to try to catch up to her.

Matt scratched at an itchy welt on his hand for a moment before folding his cane up and jamming it into his sopping wet backpack, an admission of defeat.

"I know how you feel," Luke told him gently. "I hate it when she's right." He handed Matt a bottle that Matt knew was bug spray. He shook his head no, and Luke sighed. "What else can I do?" he asked. Matt ran his hand up Luke's arm until he reached his bicep and attempted to grip it. His hand was too small. He smiled when Luke instead jutted his elbow slightly out and let Matt wrap his whole arm around it. "Duck a bit," Luke told him. "There's another branch coming up."

Slightly behind and above them, they could hear Danny trying to leap from wet branch to wet branch, enjoying himself.

* * *

"Hold this," Jessica instructed him, handing him one end of a pole. She stretched the canvas expertly along the pole's length before staking her end of it firmly into the ground with only an effortless tap.

"Hey, how did you get so good at this?" Danny asked, fiddling in vain with his own tentpole and only making it more complicated.

Jessica sighed in the way that Matt had come to know meant she was about to tell them something embarrassing. She didn't disappoint. "Girl Scouts," she said.

Danny choked on his laughter, and Matt couldn't help but grin.

"You?" Luke asked, a smile in his voice.

"Yes, me," Jessica said angrily, "What, did you all think I just emerged from the womb this pissed off? I was a kid once. I did kid shit."

"Did you sell the cookies?" Matt asked. "Door to door? Being sweet to all the old ladies so that they would buy them?"

"As a matter of fact, I did. Asshole," she told him. "Old people like me."

This cracked Danny up even more.

"What about you, Rand?" she asked. "Did mommy and daddy pay for your merit badges in Scouts? Is that why you can't get your tent up?"

The laughter died suddenly.

"No," Danny said, his voice cold. "I was never a Boy Scout."

* * *

Matt hadn't had a tent, the first time he'd tried to do this and failed. Or bug spray. Or even his cane. He didn't have anything. He hadn't known that Stick was planning on abandoning him, trusting him to find his own way.

He'd shivered in the freezing cold, and willed his feet to keep moving, imagined Stick greeting him at the safehouse with a blanket and a hot fire. He had tried to picture Stick actually camping with him, the way he had promised the nuns, with tents and marshmallows and songs. He couldn't.

He had touched every tree, mapped every root he tripped over, and palmed the map in his pocket desperately, hoping he was going the right way but deep down knowing that he was hopelessly lost.

But he kept going anyway. He refused to let Stick down.

* * *

Matt stretched his palms out, enjoying the warmth of the fire and the sound of it crackling.

Next to him, Danny played the ukelele. Matt had been wary when he pulled it out of his bag, but he was actually pretty good. "The monastery valued artistic expression," he told them. "Drums, mostly. I really miss the drum circles. But I know my way around more than a few stringed instruments too. Have you ever heard a Liuqin? They're beautiful."

It felt too easy, sitting there smelling the burnt sugar of Jessica's smores with Danny strumming and singing occasionally in Mandarin beside him. It was everything Stick had made fun of, everything he thought was weak.

But Stick was gone. Matt had failed him. He could never be what Stick wanted.

That didn't mean he wouldn't make it up to him.

* * *

"So what was the deal?" Jessica asked him.

"What deal?" Matt asked.

"You and the old man?" she pressed. "Some of it I think I get. But some of it doesn't make any sense to me."

"I don't want to talk about it," Matt said, but he knew that wouldn't stop her.

"He showed up after your dad died right? Told you that you had special powers, and he could train you in them?" she continued.

"Basically," Matt confessed. He could hear Danny and Luke's attention shifting over to him, curious.

"How did he know though? About you? What you could do?" Jessica asked.

"I don't know," Matt told her. It was the truth.

"The Chaste would have had ways," Danny filled in, and now it was Matt's turn to be curious.

"Ways?" Matt asked. "What ways?"

"Oracles," Danny told them, "Like the monks did. Prophets who they would have trusted to lead them, to protect them."

Jessica laughed. "Yeah, sure," she said.

"It's true," Danny said, defensively.

"And what would they have told him?" Matt asked, "About me? Whatever it was, they were wrong. It didn't work out."

"Damn right," Jessica said, "Because you were a kid, not a soldier. And because you have free will, which gives you the ability to tell a creepy old man where he can shove it. Good for you, Murdock."

"That's not what happened," Matt told her.

"No?" Jessica asked him. "It certainly seemed that way."

"And what if he hadn't?" Danny asked Jessica. "What if he believed him? It's not as though he was entirely wrong. The Hand does exist. There is a war. The Black Sky was real, and people have died. It would be nice if you could take any of it even a little bit seriously!"

"Way to defend the guy who was ready to kill you, Rand," Jessica said.

"Hey, hey!" Luke interrupted. "Can we change the subject, please? Matt did say he didn't want to talk about it. Let's just all relax."

"Fine. Easy," Jessica said. "We're all super good at that." She fished a beer out from her cooler. "Want one?" She shook it at Danny.

"Alcohol is an escape for those who are too weak to face themselves and find peace within," Danny told her.

Jessica just laughed. "Did a fortune cookie tell you that?" she asked.

"I'll take one," Matt told her. Danny sighed and stood up. "I'm going to go meditate," he told them.

* * *

Later, Matt found Danny in their shared tent, reading by flashlight.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

"Oh, it's actually really interesting. It's called The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Did you know that if present trends continue, the United States is on track to imprison one-third of the African American population? It's modern slavery! I just don't understand what is happening in this country..."

Matt sighed. Luke had warned him that Danny had been reading a lot lately, trying to orient himself to everything that had happened in the United States since he had been gone. Apparently, he'd used the word "woke" to describe himself, which Luke had seemed amused by.

"I'm a defense attorney working in one of the biggest cities in the country, Danny," he explained patiently. "I am aware of that."

Danny put the book down. "Sorry," he told Matt. "I just..." He seemed suddenly shy and unsure of himself. "I'm trying really hard to figure everything out, you know? To fit in? There's just so much that it seems like I'm doing wrong or not understanding."

"You're not doing anything wrong, Danny," Matt said. "Jessica hates everybody."

"I figured that out," Danny said. "But it's just hard. I don't drink. Or get sarcasm. The whole... New York City thing? Corporations and skyscrapers and the subway and systemic racism and the internet... have you read some of the things people say to each other on the internet? It's all so different than what I'm used to. And I know I sound crazy when I talk about mystical cities and oracles and chi but that's my world. That's what I know."

"I know," Matt reassured him.

"I never got to be a Scout," Danny said. "I never earned merit badges. But I've lived in the woods with nothing except the clothes on my back. I've survived freezing cold and blistering heat. I've been beaten. I've been broken down. And I've had to put myself back together. I punched..."

"...the heart of a dragon. You're the Iron Fist. I know," Matt told him, gently and with a smile.

Danny chuckled and Matt knew he was smiling too. "I just don't understand why I find having a conversation with Jessica or Luke so hard," he confessed. "I'm really trying."

"I know you are," Matt said.

"How do you do it?" Danny asked him.

"Talk to Jess and Luke?" Matt asked back.

"No! Everything!" Danny continued. "You're a survivor, just like me. You fight almost as well as me. You protect your city with a passion that I wish I could find. You navigate this whole legal world just like Jeri that just seems so complicated to me. And you get along with everyone. And you do it all despite... you know... no offense..."

Matt didn't take any. He knew that Danny meant well. "I'm not..."

"You are amazing, Matt Murdock," Danny said, and Matt didn't know what to do with that. "Did I say something wrong?" Danny asked when his face fell.

"No, it's..." Matt paused. "I have no clue what I"m doing," he finally confessed.

"You're modest too," Danny told him, thinking he was playing along with Matt's ego.

"No," Matt insisted. "I really don't, Danny. The truth is that I lied to you. I lied to you about Elektra back when we were fighting the Hand, because I knew I was weak. And Stick took advantage of that. He knew it too."

"Matt..." Danny tried to stop him, realizing how the conversation had turned.

"No, I need you to understand. I meant it when I said before that whatever oracle or prophet you think pointed Stick in my direction was wrong. Not because I didn't want to be a soldier, but because I wasn't good enough to be one. And I lied to get you all out here with me. I've never been to Stick's safehouse."

"But you have the map. He gave it to you, right?" Danny asked him.

"Yes," Matt said, "But I never made it to the safehouse the first time. I failed. I disappointed him and let him down then, just like I always did. Right up until the end."

* * *

Matt woke up in a panic, the feeling of bandages on his chest and arms giving him flashbacks to the last time he had woken up in a hospital after his accident.

"Relax, Matty," Stick's voice told him, and he calmed down but was still disoriented. The last thing he remembered, he had been lost in the woods.

"You're fine," Stick told him. "You passed out. Hypothermia. Allergic reactions to bug bites too, and a hell of a lot of bruises. Miles and miles from where you were supposed to be. You took me on quite the journey."

"You were following me?" Matt asked him, feeling betrayed.

"Well, I wasn't about to let you die," Stick said. "I don't need the Catholic Church and child services on my ass."

"What about your safehouse?" Matt asked him. "I never found it."

"And you never will," Stick told him. "Consider the test failed, kid. I'm gonna assume it's your first ever big fat F. Don't take it personally. It's my fault. I thought you could handle it."

"I can handle it!" Matt insisted. "I feel better already. Just give me a couple of weeks. Maybe when March Break starts and I'm out of school, we could try again?"

"Nah," Stick told him. "It's over. Time to move on."

Matt wasn't sure if Stick meant the test or him.

* * *

He found it.

It took him a couple of decades, but he'd finally found it.

He'd known they were close when he'd heard the flick of bowstrings and had to yell for his teammates to duck a barrage of crossbow arrows that they had somehow triggered. He was also thankful that it had been Luke who had set off the bear trap, and Jessica who'd fallen into the pit.

He ran his fingertips over the faded yellow map propped up on the side of the cabin wall, the paper so thin that he could barely make the lines out. This had to be it. This was Stick's safehouse.

"This is it?" Jessica asked.

"Yeah. Why? Is it not impressive?" Matt asked.

"I don't think it would belong to a member of the Chaste if it was," Danny said.

Matt took a moment to get a sense of the cabin, and startled when he realized that he couldn't. Was it... lead lined? Hermetically sealed? "Definitely Stick's safehouse," he muttered.

The three Defenders all lined up behind him, a protective gesture. "I know I asked this already, but you know he's not gonna be in there right?" Jessica asked.

"Really?" Danny asked her, and she appeared to be somewhat chastened when she realized that Matt's face was beginning to contort and he was holding back tears.

"Goddammit. Here it comes," she said. But her tone wasn't angry. Only sad.

They moved closer, and he felt Luke's comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Well," Luke said, "after you..."

Matt choked back his feelings, stepped away from them and nervously approached the door. It was a foot or so deep, steel and concrete. He listened carefully, trying to determine the locking mechanism, only to find himself suddenly shoved backward as Jessica launched herself at it with all of the force she had. The door didn't stand a chance.

"Sorry," Jessica said. "What Luke said," and she stepped back to allow Matt to enter.

Once inside, Matt expected some sense of closure. Some confirmation that Stick was wrong about him, or that he was good enough, or that he could move on. Instead, there was just... a cabin. And a sparse one at that. It had a bed. A small, well-stocked kitchen. And a back room with a stash of weapons and equipment for fighting. And... wait... was that...

He could sense Jessica, Luke and Danny's shock behind him as they realized with him what Stick had left them - the purpose of the safehouse.

"Who are you?" the cabin's lone occupant, a kid who couldn't have been older than twelve, asked them, emerging from the back room in a posture ready to fight. "Where's Stick?"


End file.
